And Into the Fire Read online

  The chain gun effortlessly ate them up, disintegrating everything and everyone in its line of sight.

  Now the camera cut to the Humvees.

  “Humvee number one is heading for the main gate to do recon and surveillance,” Elena said. “His three partners have also taken off in the direction of the aboveground storage containers to the right of the main reactor building.

  “Look at those silo-type storage containers—thirty of them,” Elena said. “Every one of them is heavily encased in concrete and steel. Each of those dry silos is twenty-five feet high and a dozen feet across and is packed to the max with thirty-seven spent fuel assemblies. Circulating air continuously cools the rods. And now you see our High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles—the three other M1117 Humvees—approaching the long row of storage containers, halting perhaps one hundred yards in front of them.

  “Uh-oh,” Elena said. “Two bogeys on your five o’clock, and they’re coming in fast.”

  “Those choppers look familiar?” President Caldwell asked.

  “They should. They’re ours—Bell AH-1 Cobras,” General Hagberg said. “We’ve been selling them to Pakistan for years.”

  Elena froze the frame. “See the soldier in the grayish U.S.-made multicams leaning out the window of that Humvee?”

  “That’s a Crye Precision–made, desert-hued, multienvironment camouflage outfit, to be exact,” Hagberg said.

  “Now look at the weapon on his shoulder—a surface-to-air missile, or SAM for short,” Elena said. “This one’s an FIM-92 Stinger. ISIS took a whole brigade’s worth of equipment off the Iraqi Army. Thank God the Pakistan Air Force is about to fix those ISIS/TTP bastards. Look at those Cobras zero in on that stolen Humvee, guns blazing. It’s only about two hundred yards away. No way the Stinger can stop it now, can it? Uh, well, maybe. A SAM can travel at almost Mach 2. All it has to do is find the Cobra’s heat signature and lock on it. All the Stinger needs is a … nanosecond.”

  Elena unfroze the frame, and two huge consecutive explosions shook the invisible camera operator as two massively swelling fireballs filled the screen for over half a minute.

  The satellite cam cut to an overhead of two of the Humvees with the TOW launchers on their roofs. They were taking aim on two rows of fifteen vertical dry nuclear waste silos each. The first TOW missile blew a huge smoking pit into the spent fuel silo about two feet from the right edge. A second missile took out most of the silo’s right side. A split second later, the next TOW blew a gaping hole in the one next to it.

  They all watched in silence as the Humvees went right down the line, then back again on the other side of the waste containers, blasting over and over and over what was left of the remaining silos into nothingness. The men even hammered the ones that were already blown to pieces, as if delivering a nuclear coup de grace—until, in the end, the blasted silos caught fire, spewing radioactive flames and smoke.

  The room was silent.

  “What in God’s name was that?” General Hagberg finally shouted in shock and disbelief. “They must have hot-loaded those TOW warheads with Semtex.”

  Whatever the case, his colleagues remained silent, and the attack continued. The sat-cam cut to the third vehicle. Surveilling the road just outside the main gate, the Humvee was now receiving incoming machine-gun fire. The clip cut to footage of another approaching Pakistani Talha APC, this one with a long-barreled machine gun mounted on its roof.

  “That’s a .50 caliber M2,” Elena said, “sometimes known as Ma Deuce. Its range is over two thousand yards, which is approximately how far away it is now.”

  A satellite photo zeroed in on the armored vehicle with the M2, then cut back to the Humvee.

  “Inside the Humvee, the remote-operated CROWS weapons system is swinging its big gun toward the incoming fire,” Elena said.

  The heavy chain gun atop the Humvee’s roof sighted in on the M2 and its Talha APC over a mile away. The digitized video cut to a burgeoning reddish-yellow fireball rising up toward the recon satellite.

  “That’s what a chain gun’ll do to Ma Deuce,” General Hagberg said.

  Then the satellite cut to the aboveground nuclear waste silos.

  “All thirty silos are now on fire,” Elena said. “The spent rods will burn and smolder for decades to come. Everything touched by its ashes and fallout will die.”

  There was more stunned silence.

  “We got the following footage off a jihadi Web site,” Elena finally said.

  A terrorist camera had been filming from one of the other three Humvees’ POV. They were pulling up to an industrial-green concrete building. They began blowing the building to pieces with TOW missiles. Within a minute, it was a demolished wreck.

  “What the hell is that?” NSA Director Carmony asked.

  “The Pool House,” General Hagberg said.

  “What’s that mean?” President Caldwell asked.

  “Most spent waste is stored in massive rectangular pools forty-five feet high,” Elena said. “They contain as many as two thousand spent fuel assemblies. One pool has more spent fuel than that entire dry silo field.”

  “In other words,” General Hagberg said, “these guys are about to do some very serious damage.”

  “They’re going to make what their buddies did to those dry silos look like Sunday-go-to-meeting,” Elena said.

  Then the terrorists dismounted—a half dozen men exiting the Humvee. Elena froze the frame.

  “Notice the garb and the gear,” Elena said, zooming in. “Crye Precision multicams with the Iraqi desert pattern, matching tact vests, MOLLE Rucksacks, Dragon Skin body armor, and MICH headgear—that is, Modular Integrated Communications Helmets—all covered with that very fetching Iraqi desert camouflage pattern.”

  “They are dressed to kill,” General Hagberg said.

  “Indeed,” Elena said. “Just look at the ordnance.”

  She scanned to their weaponry and went in tight.

  “HK416s all with sixteen-and-a-half-inch barrels, Aimpoint CompM4 red dot sights, vertical foregrips,” General Hagberg said. “Note the .45 magnum Desert Eagles on their hips—the most powerful semiautomatic pistol made.”

  “What’s the automatic weapon that one guy has?” Elena asked. “The guy off to the side.”

  “He’s carrying an M249 machine gun. Fucker weighs in at over twenty-two pounds,” General Hagberg said. “He must think he’s Rambo.”

  At that moment, the terrorist glanced over his shoulder and the camera caught his long hair and bearded face. Elena froze the frame and went in tight.

  “He even looks like Stallone,” Conrad said.

  Elena unfroze the frame, and the six soldiers disappeared into the building.

  “Lord knows,” Conrad said, “what they plan on doing now.”

  “One thing we know,” Elena said, “is where those six men are headed.”

  “Which is where?” General Hagberg asked.

  “The main operations unit,” Elena said. “Or whatever’s left of it.”

  The men stared at her in silence. “What’s in it?” Carmony asked.

  “The nuclear control room,” she said.

  A terrorist standing behind the men with a camera mounted on his helmet was carefully documenting their entrance into the Reactor Building. After transmitting to their AV units, he himself entered.

  Their own NSA editor cut to satellite footage of the two Humvees that had destroyed the spent fuel silos. Driving away from the fiery, smoke-shrouded remains of the silos, they quickly separated, each entering the complex of power plant buildings from a different direction, on a different street.

  Elena cut to a four-way split screen, three of the four rectangular frames depicting the progress of the three different Humvees through the complex. The fourth frame contained sat footage of all four going from street to street. Turning left here, right there.

  “Notice how methodical each of the Humvees is in its route. The one in the top left frame—he’s swinging past
the Boiler Building, turning at the pump station. The Humvee in the frame next to him now—he’s got his itinerary mapped out. A lot of work went into this. These boys know exactly where they’re going. Someone briefed them really well—excellent recon and prep.” Elena froze all four frames. “Note the frame to your upper right. One of the men is rolling a medium-sized drum in the alleyway between those two buildings.” She unfroze the four frames. “They’re all doing the same. They’re deploying a bunch of mystery drums at strategic locations all around the nuclear site.”

  For several minutes, they studied the satellite footage of the two Humvees’ movements.

  “I counted twenty of those canisters,” General Hagberg finally said.

  “Now for the pièce de résistance,” Elena said. “Note the top left frame. A Humvee is turning at the Pump House and heading straight toward the No. 1 Unit Reactor Containment Building. Two more are joining him. Guess what they plan to do? Figured it out yet, General? I know you did. Give the four-star a big fat cigar. Hell, give all the boys in the room a round of applause. Our friends in the Humvees are going for the three remaining containment units.”

  “Wow,” was all General Hagberg could muster.

  “You got it, General,” Elena said. “The A. Q. Khan Nuclear Power Plant is in for the biggest nuclear hummer of its life.”

  “So there’s no escape for any of them,” Carmony said softly.

  “Never was,” Elena said. “They’ve been dead men walking ever since they blew up that first waste silo.”

  When the Humvees finished their runs, they came to a stop alongside each other. The Humvees’ heavy loads of Semtex blew first, followed a split second later by the twenty Semtex drums situated throughout the plant. Again, the fireballs quickly merged into a single scarlet-streaked, rapidly expanding, flame-shooting dirigible of radioactive fire.

  The A. Q. Khan Nuclear Power Plant was now one colossal conflagration.

  PART III

  Truth is hell seen too late.

  —Thomas Hobbes

  1

  “I’d kick his ass so hard he’d choke on his colon.”

  —Elena Moreno

  Jules Meredith sat in a booth at Ye Auld Sod. She was in D.C., mostly to see her oldest, closest friend, Elena Moreno. An Irish bar in one of D.C.’s poorer neighborhoods, Jules figured she could meet Elena and not have to worry about any officials, political operators, or reporters recognizing them.

  Jules had been sitting there ten minutes, studying the bar’s customers. A lower-middle-class shot-and-beer bar crowd, they were ethnically mixed but with relatively few women. For the most part, they were unshaven men in work clothes and work boots, many of them drunk and loud. A local hangout where everyone knew everyone.

  Elena’s entrance was dramatic. She had changed out of her work suit into a black skirt, a matching blouse with the top three buttons open, and ebony high-heeled pumps. She was strolling through the bar like she owned it, coming straight at Jules with a long-legged, hip-swinging walk. As Elena got closer, she shook her long hair out of her face—“hair black and shiny as a raven’s wing” was how a mutual friend had once described it. Elena’s face also showed a hint of Mexican blood—her skin smooth and tight, cheekbones high and wide, eyes twinkling with mean merriment … a face Jules had known for over twenty-five years.

  Jules, who was occasionally on television, dressed more discreetly—in jeans, a T-shirt, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, and wraparound sunglasses.

  The jukebox blasted the bar with the Stones’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and the way the men stared at Elena, the lyrics seemed to reflect their feelings.

  “What are we doing in this hellhole?” Elena asked.

  “Scoring crack,” Jules said. “Want some?”

  “I want a drink.”

  Elena poured herself a pint of Guinness from the booth pitcher and threw back a Jameson shot. Four more were lined up.

  “Bad day at the office?”

  “The briefing from hell.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  “More of that Pakistan nuclear shit.”

  “Who was there?” Julie asked.

  “The president, the CIA director, the defense secretary, NSA—the most boring group of dead people I ever met.”

  “What do they think of you?”

  “After the meeting, the president called me into the Oval Office for a private talk. He says I’m a compulsive depressive, that I always see the glass as half empty and it’s hurting my credibility with his people.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That the glass is half-full all right—half-full of bomb-grade HEU.”

  “He must have loved that.”

  “He just stared at me.”

  “The truth is always dark,” Jules said.

  “He can’t handle dark.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I told him we’re doing everything wrong in Pakistan. We’ve been chasing the drain so long we have almost no options left—no good ones, that’s for sure. We’ve armed all the bad guys, bankrolled their backers, and now the vultures are coming home to roost.”

  “How’d he respond?”

  “He almost pitched an embolism.”

  “Come on,” Jules said, grinning, “you can tell me. What did our cretin in chief really say?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Have we ever been on?”

  Elena took a long breath. “‘We have wars,’ he said, ‘in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. Hell, half the Mideast is in flames. Russia is still trying to destabilize and take over the Ukraine. Now you want me to do what? Invade Pakistan?’”

  “Which was not your suggestion.”

  “Not at all.”

  “So when he’s stuck, he makes up false assertions and imputes them to those he disagrees with.”

  “He’s always been stupid and weak,” Elena said.

  “Like he was spayed and neutered.”

  “At birth,” Elena added.

  For a long moment, they stared into their drinks, silent.

  “Unfortunately, the problem is worse than he can imagine,” Elena said, shaking her head sadly. “Pakistan wants us to think their country’s coming apart at the seams and that these attacks are an ISIS/TTP attempt to topple the government in Islamabad. They want to convince us that is their sole focus, and that there’s no way this nuclear consortium will attack the U.S. homeland.”

  “And Caldwell is buying that shit?” Jules asked.

  “It’s worse than that,” Elena said. “He said he’s more afraid of me than those guys. He warned me to watch my step, that I’m pissing people off.”

  “You know more about Pakistani terrorists than anyone alive,” Jules said. “You speak their languages, their dialects. Fifteen years undercover in Islamabad and Karachi—you barely got out of there with your life. Now you run the Agency’s Pakistan desk, and they won’t listen to you?”

  “It’s not that they won’t, they can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “The truth hurts.”

  “What did Hobbes say?” It was one of Elena’s favorite quotes.

  “‘Hell is truth seen too late.’ And I told them hell is now coming to the homeland—nuclear attacks worse than anything we’ve war-gamed—and they’re coming soon. I told them we have to go full red alert—pack the National Guard into the airports, seaports, borders, everything. Have the state guards patrol our nuclear power plants and weapons labs—any and all things nuclear. And we also have to warn the public.”

  “Then they asked you for your evidence,” Jules said, “which meant divulging your source.”

  “And I reminded them he was my source solely and exclusively, and I wouldn’t risk having his name leaked.”

  “Our moron in chief must have been tossing hats in the air at that one.”

  “He said I had his personal guarantee that the informant’s identity would not go beyond those men I’d just met with.�
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  Jules exploded with laughter. Elena had to wait for her to calm down before she could continue.

  “And you said?” Jules asked, barely able to contain her mirth.

  “I told him, with all due respect, he couldn’t guarantee anyone’s complete silence. I’d seen gentlemen, including the ones in that room, leak countless classified reports, especially when their tenure in office was near its end. I then reminded him that half the people in his cabinet were about to return to the private sector. In a few months, they’ll be history. They could leak with impunity, then head out, memoirs in hand, on their speaking tours. I also pointed out that Woodward was writing a book about the administration, interviewing the entire National Security apparatus, including everyone in that room. I said my story was so juicy and the chances of someone in that room leaking it was close to one hundred percent.”

  “And the president said?” Jules asked.

  “If I could not produce the informant, then I had no source, no evidence, no practicable plan. All I had were hunches and intuition.”

  “He didn’t say ‘woman’s intuition,’ I hope.”

  “I’d have shoved both his Gucci loafers and that fucking Testoni briefcase up his bitch-ass.”

  “Could you pull your source out of Pakistan, bring him to the States, and have him explain how bad it is over there?”

  Elena stared at Jules a long moment, silent. “Yeah, maybe if I could find him. He’s disappeared though—no address, no GPS, no cell phone. He’s in so deep I have no one in Pakistan who can reach him, either. His only contact is me.”

  “He’s really as good as you say he is?”

  “You know the ISIS and Pakistani Taliban merger?”

  “I heard rumors.”

  “Take them to Morgan Stanley.”

  “And your source knows this … how?”

  “He’s the guy who brokered the deal.”

  Jules stared at her friend, stunned. “What was your last word from him?” she finally asked.

  “He said things were hot—hotter than hot.”

  “What happens if ISIS/TTP stops buying his cover?”